Archive for September, 2010

Several companies in the health insurance industry have decided that they will no longer write insurance policies for children because they will ‘no longer be able to deny coverage to children with “pre-existing conditions.”’

HCAN has a write-up on this new piece of slime from the CEO’s and the executive officers and the boards of directors of Wellpoint, CoventryOne, and others.

These companies, according to HCAN, announced this decision just days before pertinent parts of the new reform regulations go into effect, regulations that forbid this sort of behavior, in part at least because it is so disgusting.

Of course! The sociopathic slime that run these companies just couldn’t stand it if they had to give up some of their perks, like expensive mansions and condos, fancy cars, and expensive whores, limitless expense accounts, all purchased on the policyholders’ dimes, not to mention their obscenely huge salaries that they earn by denying people – children – health care coverage.

And let’s not forget that this is exactly what the Republicans and the Conservatives and Tea Idiots want. Corporate rule of America. Rule by sociopathic slime. This is the sort of thing that Mike Huckabee recently cheered for at the so-called Values Voters Summit. This is one of their values. It’s typical of their values, which at their root have the Prime Directive: “Profit matters, people don’t”.

There will be no health care reform until we get rid of these slime-filled parasites, these insurance corporations that suck the life out of people.

Indeed, the United Farm Workers (UFW) began a campaign not long ago that it aptly calls Take Our Jobs. "Farm workers are ready to welcome citizens and legal residents who wish to replace them in the field," the UFW says. "We will use our knowledge and staff to help connect the unemployed with farm employers. Just fill out the form to the right and continue on to the request for job application." Arturo Rodriguez, president of the UFW, told comedian Stephen Colbert that only three people signed up. "Americans do not want to work in the fields," he explained. "It’s difficult, it requires expertise, and the conditions are horrid."

And later:

So, if you’re upset about the unemployment rate, don’t blame immigrants. For starters, blame the U.S. companies that are sitting on a record $837 billion in cash. "That’s enough to pay 2.4 million people $70,000-a-year salaries for five years," writes Matt Krantz in USA Today. Blame the Obama administration for shelling out a million bucks per soldier in Afghanistan, which could go instead toward creating good jobs at home. Blame those in Congress who refuse to support further stimulus spending.

Worth reading, assuming you can maintain some semblance of intelligence and rationality while floundering in the emotional miasma of unemployment and not just looking for a convenient scapegoat.

Now get out there and starting picking them there Brussels Sprouts! [Okay, that’s not what he’s saying, but The Lion has a vicious cold and is refusing to hold himself responsible for saying silly things, simply in order to free himself to say irresponsible silly things that might make him feel better. And no, it’s not working.]

Mike Huckabee is a fundogelical former governor of Arkansas running for the Republican Presidential nomination. He’s also a sick, stupid s.o.b. Here’s his take on barring insurance companies from refusing people with pre-existing conditions.

"It sounds so good, and it’s such a warm message to say we’re not gonna deny anyone from a preexisting condition," Huckabee explained at the Value Voters Summit today. "Look, I think that sounds terrific, but I want to ask you something from a common sense perspective. Suppose we applied that principle [to] our property insurance. And you can call your insurance agent and say, "I’d like to buy some insurance for my house." He’d say, "Tell me about your house." "Well sir, it burned down yesterday, but I’d like to insure it today." And he’ll say "I’m sorry, but we can’t insure it after it’s already burned." Well, no preexisting conditions."

Pre-existing condition? Tough shit, and don’t let the hospital door hit you in the ass on the way out to the street where you can die.

Pre-existing condition? You had acne when you were thirteen and didn’t tell us about it. Tough shit. No insurance for you. Go die somewhere where we can’t see you.

Hey, Huckabee, people aren’t houses, you fucking Christian dimwit asshole moron. And they aren’t property either, you piece of crap.

And note that his view is the view of the Republicans, the Party of No, the Party of Screw the People, the Party of Help the Rich, the Party of Sociopaths, Idiots, and Incompetents.

The Republican way, perfectly exemplified. And these are the sick bastards the polls say the electorate wants to put back in control? That’s not putting the fox in charge of the henhouse, that’s blowing up the whole goddam farm.

Didja hear the latest reason the elite pols and their mouthpieces are giving for not letting the Bush tax cuts for the rich lapse? It’s been dribbling loudly from Republican mouths for a little while now (decades really), and this morning frothed forth from the thin lips of Senator Evan Bayh, Democrat from Indiana.

Don’t tax the rich, because they give you jobs.

Think about that. In one fell phrase our politicians have elevated rich people to the status of princes and priests. They don’t have to contribute anymore, or any more, to the common good that in fact made it possible for them to get rich.

Since the tax being discussed is the income tax, perhaps for the slower citizens out there we might note that we’re talking about taxing the personal income of these parasites who make their money off the sweat and blood of working people. We’re not talking about taxing their businesses, which is where the hiring is done and paid for. The Republicans and their shills at Fox and elsewhere (Limbaugh, Beck, et al) are conflating personal and business taxes because they believe you are too damn stupid to figure out their shell game. (Given what the political landscape looks like these days, The Lion tends to think they may be right.)

And we’re only talking about a four-point rise in income tax, from 35% to 39%.

Think about it. The economy is in the toilet, largely due to Republican tax cuts for the wealthy and to massive and wasteful Republican spending over the last decade and to Republicans letting their wealthy friends steal every penny that wasn’t nailed down’; in fact, the Republicans, with the help of some pathetic Democrats, have been pulling out the nails as fast as they can. And here we have the Republicans, and conservative, spineless Democrats, down on their knees, mouths open, in front of the obscenely wealthy Koch brothers and their ilk who are out to destroy the United States as a functioning, law-based representative republic by undermining the processes of democracy with their wealth, because they don’t have enough of your money yet.

Those people are saying, in effect, “Don’t tax those rich people. They give us our jobs as Senators and Representatives.”

There’s an instructive, long article at Common Dreams on what happened, and is happening, to the public schools in Washington, D.C., after the system was taken over by an unqualified and obviously incompetent person named Michelle Rhee. Despite having only three years teaching experience and no management experience, the mayor of Washington named her Chancellor of the public school system, and the schools have suffered ever since.

It’s one more example of corporate and conservative philosophy treating people as ciphers, as things to be manipulated to make numbers look good on balance sheets. It’s a great example of what happens when arrogance, ignorance, and ideology gain power.

There’s a good piece over at the Truthout website about U.S. Army soldiers forced to attend a Christian rock concert. Several who refused were locked down and punished.

Christian fundogelicalism is now part of the United States military in a major way, and non-Christian soldiers are suffering under the lash, if you will, of fundogelical military commanders who constantly and consistently violate their oaths to protect and defend the Constitution.

And they are enabled and abetted and encouraged by fundo fools in the Congress:

"General, you have thanked a lot of people today, and I just want to thank you," [Congressman J. Randy Forbes (R-Virginia)]said according to the Fort Lee Traveler. "I want to thank you because in a world where it is so easy to back away from one’s faith you have shown not only the courage to train and equip our Army to fight and defend freedom but to stand for faith across America."

Forbes was speaking to Maj Gen James E. Chambers, a born-again Christian, commander of Fort Eustis, where the incident took place and who was responsible for the incident.

These people seem to have forgotten that the military in this country does not ‘stand for faith’, that religious faith has no business as part of the military structure and is purely a private matter, and that coercing soldiers, or anyone for that matter, to attend religious services is completely anti-American, violating the very basic foundations of American Constitutional and legal structure.

Apparently the practice is relatively common in the service as a growing element of the command structure views it as their duty to enforce Christian beliefs and force those beliefs on the soldiers.

The Dove World Outreach Center, some kind of fundogelical church in Florida run by a fellow named Terry Jones, plans to burn a bunch of Korans on September 11 to send some sort of message to Muslims around the world.

The powers-that-be in Washington, including General David Petraeus, are bent out of shape about the event, claiming that it will put American soldiers at risk of harm.

"I am very concerned by the potential repercussions of the possible Koran burning," Petraeus said. "Even the rumor that it might take place has sparked demonstrations such as the one that took place in Kabul yesterday. Were the actual burning to take place, the safety of our soldiers and civilians would be put in jeopardy and accomplishment of the mission would be made more difficult."

Sorry, but this is a huge load of crap all around.

Americans are in jeopardy over there because American politicians put them in jeopardy by starting and continuing two dumbass wars.

Petraeus and his minions are worried that burning Korans will make the Muslim peoples angry. Maybe someone should tell the arrogant bonehead that burning their children to death, killing wives, husbands, fathers, brothers, sisters, innocents of all stripes for the last decade pissed them off, among a host of other frankly evil things the Americans and their allies have done to Islamic peoples.

And frankly if these Muslims are so ignorant, so superstitious, so foolish as to think that burning a mass-produced book is such a damned insult that they have to riot en masse, then what the hell is the United States fighting for over there? Let them fight their own civil wars. Let’s spend our money here, in America, for Americans, to save a country that really matters to Americans.

And why on earth should people in the United States get all nervous when they want to express their free-speech rights? If people are going to riot because some fruitcake fundogelical burns a book, hey, more power to both sides. Yeah, kind of screws up the myth of the big, powerful United States, doesn’t it? Walking around on tiptoes over a thing like this. And the General, nothing like a full American General trying to shut up voices of dissent in America, no matter how ignorant those voices are. Bill of Rights, anyone? Constitution, anyone? You worried about your troops, General? Then maybe you should get off your public relations tours and get your ass back there and do something to protect them from the people they keep trying to kill.

But these goddam religious freaks on both sides are dragging the world down into a pit of ignorance, fear, superstition, and just plain stupidity. To hell with both sides.

Hop on over to Common Dreams to read the full column. Green offers a brutal assessment of political reality in America today. Here’s a sample from his long column:

Looking at the rhetoric the right throws in the direction of our president these days, questioning his very nationality (oh, did I mention that he’s black?), it’s easy to see that they‘ve gone completely over the line. But what’s really out of control is what lies underneath this insanity generated for the consumption of an ignorant hoi polloi. And what that is – what you see when you move the slime-infested rock away – is an unfathomably monstrous greed. Watching these folks in action, you could easily get the impression that they had been impoverished their whole lives. That they had been denied everything, right down to food and water. That they had been deprived through poverty especially of their dignity. You know, like the real poor people of this world, the forty or fifty percent of the Earth’s population that survives on less than two dollars per day. Those folks.

Instead, we are talking about people who are already fantastically rich. And who, despite this, are absolutely hell-bent on getting richer, even if that means depriving hundreds of millions of people in the American middle class of their middle classness, and in many cases, ultimately of their lives. How do we explain people like this? Are they not essentially sociopathic? Are they not made of essentially the same stuff as those who can kill without guilt or remorse? Especially when you consider that even the greediest among us reach a limit beyond which one can effectively make use of the next dollar and the one beyond that, so that pushing others into poverty is no longer even for purposes of your own benefit, but instead for some kind of sick sport? Aren’t these the characters whose essential sickness preachers and philosophers and shrinks have been trying to sort out for millennia?

A friend stopped by this morning on her way to work and told The Lion what happened at the gas station a few moments earlier.

The Lion notes that most of the gas stations in town are owned by a fellow who is either Middle Eastern or of Middle Eastern descent. Many of his workers have similar backgrounds.

The woman was filling her gas tank when a fellow drove up, grumped out of his car and went inside, apparently to prepay. She said he seemed in a bad mood.

Moments later he came out muttering angrily, and then the clerk ran out and shouted at the guy, “You’re a racist,” and then they jawed at each other angrily, with the customer at one point telling the clerk to go back to the country he came from.

Even at second hand it’s ugly.

But this is what Newt Gingrich and Glen Beck, both ugly, ugly personalities, and the Republican/Tea Party have brought to just about every town in America. Those two and their compatriots in the hate-wins-power movement are doing their best to destroy the United States in order to satisfy their voracious, narcissistic egos and win political power. The Republican Party/Tea Party are doing their damndest to ride their ginned-up hatred back into power, where they promise to shut down the government.

Of course it does make perfect sense that they would shut down the government if they got into power. They’re not competent, not capable of governing. They just want power so they can destroy the social fabric that holds the country together, based on some ignorant and thoughtless idea of what they call ‘liberty’ and ‘freedom’.

These are evil people. They are soulless and murderous.

Gingrich is stumbling all over himself over the Islamic center planned for Lower Manhattan, a couple of blocks from the construction at the World Trade Center. His latest plan calls for the Federal Government to make the WTC a ‘national battlefield memorial’ so that the government can deny the Islamic project.

"I think the Congress has the ability to declare the area a national battlefield memorial because I think we should think of the World Trade Center as a battlefield site; this is a war," he said, apparently thinking that if Ground Zero was a national park, Park51 would be restricted from building near it.

Just for the record, the WTC was not a battlefield. It was the scene of a vicious and clever mass murder carried out by a determined band of religiopolitical thugs under the noses of a Republican administration that deliberately and arrogantly ignored the warnings of experienced anti-terrorist experts that a terrorist attack was going to happen soon. ‘The war’ was what followed, when the American political and military establishment, aided and abetted by a compromised press, initiated two wars of choice, carried out by an arrogant, bumbling, ignorant bunch of Republican ideologues whose emotional and intellectual development stopped when they were twelve years old. Two countries have been destroyed, millions of people displaced, and untold tens or hundreds of thousands of innocents killed. By American arrogance. By American stupidity. By American lust for power.

But Gingrich, the anti-government maven, doesn’t care about that. He wants American government to commit suicide.

And if that fails, he said, the state government should step in and use its considerable power to stymie the development.

"The Attorney General of New York, Andrew Cuomo, could intervene because frankly he has the ability to slow it down for decades if he wants to."

Remember that Gingrich is a fellow who once shut down the government, and who believes government should stay out of people’s lives and business and religion.

But here he is, not only cheering the movement to shut down the government if the Republicans regain the House this Fall, but insisting that all levels of government should stop a peaceful religious project for the basest of reasons: that ‘those people’ are different.

There are no legitimate moral, ethical, or legal grounds for stopping or objecting to the project. The Gingrichian motives are base and evil, stemming from nothing more than a sociopathic attempt on the part of the fear-crazed, power-hungry Republican/Tea Party to gain political power and use it against the majority of Americans and to favor their corporate masters, who take taxpayer money and rake in consumer money and lavish the wealth of princes and kings on themselves while they rip apart the country and the people that made their success possible.

The great evil is not Islam (or Judaism or Catholicism or Hinduism or whichever Protestant sect the other Protestant sects disagree with). The great evil comprises those who proclaim their patriotism and love of country while they do their best to shred the foundations of democracy and freedom. The great evils are named Gingrich, Beck, Limbaugh, the Koch brothers, and others among the nation’s wealthy, the princes of Wall Street, the vampires and bloodsuckers in their mansions and limousines.

They have sown the seeds of hatred and violence, even here in a small local gas station, in search of personal aggrandizement.

If they succeed, The Lion fervently hopes they reap what they sow, in spades.